The sky, like so much else, has begun to change.
Garbage watches it as she talks. He watches the horizon because he still feels exposed when he looks at her too long, sure that his devotion to her would be writ plain upon his face. For all his sins, he has never been much of a liar, and deceit – even if it is for good – does not come easy to him. But his ears flick as he listens, not missing a word, as she talks of her children. They have shared this information before, and it’s not much he doesn’t know (though he had not met Beyza before today, he had met some of the others, and he particularly remembers the rainbow-sheened filly, when he had come across them, a mirror of the way she had come across him and Bad).
“I think all your children are lucky to have you,” he says. It’s not quite a response to her comments – it’s vague – but he also believes this, because he saw how she was with Mazikeen, saw how she was with Holler, and he has no doubt she extended that same kindness to her other offspring. He looks at her when he says it, notices how the changing light reflects in her blue eyes. He has always loved her eyes.
She asks of his children, and he hesitates. He looks back at the horizon, at the ever-lowering sun. It will be dark soon, he thinks, and then what? He will have to bid her goodbye at some point – her good deed was done, after all – but he cannot yet think too much on that.
“Some, in my younger years, but I didn’t know them well,” he says. There were dalliances, and he supposes children came from some of them, but he didn’t know them. And there were the children he had with Tabytha – the twins they left on the beach, especially – but that is too much to bring up.
“Magic let me birth two sons, as well,” he says, “but one I haven’t seen in years, and one...I don’t think he cared for me.”
You met him, he wants to say, and you loved me anyway.
The way the dying light reflects on the water is striking. He doesn’t take his eyes off of it because it’s romantic, this scene, and here he is trying not to love her and telling her what an awful father he is. He could have a thousand chances and never get this right.
“It’s beautiful,” he says, “the way the light hits the water. I didn’t think I’d like the water, after drowning in it twice now, but from here…it’s lovely.”
@Agetta